In testing within clinical laboratories to measure various chemical constituents in biological fluids obtained from patients, such as whole blood, blood serum, blood plasma, interstitial fluid, urine, and the like, automated clinical analyzers and other automated equipment (e.g., centrifuges) may reduce the number of trained technicians required to perform analyses or pre-analysis processing, improve overall accuracy, and reduce the cost per operation performed.
Typically, an automated analyzer or automated equipment for performing pre-analysis processing may include an automated system (e.g., a robot) that is adapted to automatically transfer sample containers (e.g., sample tubes) from one location to another.
During the transfer operation, a robot under the control of a robot controller, may position a pair of fingers in order to grip the sample container. During the transfer step, sometimes the tube may slip within the fingers, and, thus, may become improperly positioned for the next operation. Additionally, the location within the fingers may be unknown especially given that the sample containers may be from an assortment of sizes and types (i.e., have different width and/or length sample tube bodies and various configurations of caps). As such, the robot controller may either crash the sample container into a receptacle adapted to receive the sample container because the sample container is improperly positioned in the fingers, or otherwise allow it to be improperly inserted (e.g., not bottomed out) into a receptacle. Accordingly, the inventor recognized there is a need for a method of transferring sample containers that does not suffer from the aforementioned problems.